As wineries grow, they add new people—an assistant winemaker, a cellar master, a vineyard manager, a tasting room manager, and hospitality staff. As the team, the production volume, and the vineyard acreage grow, new skills are required for specific tasks like sales, marketing, social media, events, accounting, and more.
Most of these functions need software to meet their day-to-day needs and to generate reports for business updates. Over time, small to medium-sized wineries tend to acquire a jumble of software systems that do a good job at the task for which they were purchased but don’t talk to each other easily. This disconnect needs someone to integrate the records for a ‘global view’ of the winery’s finances and create required compliance reports.
A Better Way
Adopting a single-system approach, like end-to-end enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, allows companies to simplify and unify all business functions across an organization. Crafted ERP is designed explicitly for beverage manufacturers, creating a fully integrated business solution tailored to the wine industry and other bev-alc categories.
Wineries can streamline production, accounting, demand planning, compliance, and sales in a single, harmonious platform rather than relying on a patchwork of software systems. Crafted is built in Oracle NetSuite, a global leader in ERP software. It offers detailed insights and real-time data to provide a better understanding of costs, resource usage, and overall business performance.
Crafted is designed, implemented, and supported by experts from the wine industry, including Mike Alley. Before joining the team, Alley had 20 years of experience as a winemaker. Alley now serves as a Crafted winery product manager and understands ERP technology’s important role in winemaking.
Alley avers that, with Crafted, “I could bottle a wine, hold that bottle of wine, and confidently tell you the cost of that bottle of wine. That’s because our ERP system is all one thing and not integrating into other purchasing, demand planning or material requirements planning (MRP) software. We are all of that.”
Adapting to Changing Times
As a winery grows and markets shift, Crafted draws on the flexibility of NetSuite and Oracle Cloud to scale the technology and functionality with it. It’s easy to add new dashboards, modules, or users. Wineries can also seamlessly handle intercompany transactions when acquiring new subsidiaries, locations, or storage areas. Crafted keeps operations lean and teams functioning more efficiently.
As younger consumers drink less wine and aging Boomers cut back, wine consumption declines, and some winery owners are looking to sell. For others, selling is the hoped-for culmination of their winery journey, with the proceeds financing reinvestment or a more relaxed lifestyle. Regardless, being better prepared to sell will increase the payout.
“Having a world-class ERP system crafted on NetSuite makes you more attractive as an acquisition target,” says Jason Hatfield, head of product for Crafted. “We see a reasonable number of sales from people who want to position themselves for an exit. No private equity firm or larger company will question whether Crafted will integrate seamlessly into their existing systems.”
An Expanded View of the Future
Many family-owned wineries intend to pass the winery and brand they’ve painstakingly and lovingly built onto the next generation. To achieve that, they are reimagining their businesses through modernization, replanting, and broadening their beverage range.
One challenge faced by any bev-alc maker is the growth of ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktails in cans, functional non-alcoholic alternatives with wellness attributes, and even a potential rise in THC-infused drinks offering an alternative high. Wineries throughout the industry are already offering canned wines, and others are experimenting with and selling non-alcoholic wines.
“What makes Crafted unique is that we also make software for all beverage categories,” says Hatfield. “We are the only company that does this natively—we didn’t start with one and bridge into the other or work through partnerships.
Hatfield goes on to describe how wineries can easily expand into other categories, such as cider, spirits, or RTDs. “We have multiple software editions that all operate in the same system and work on the same foundational principles. So, if a winery decides to start making spirits or a brewery wants to bring in bulk spirits to make RTDs, we can just flip a switch, and they have access to everything in the distillery edition. This includes our spirits tax calculations, so they can start reporting spirits compliance to the TTB immediately.”
Crafting Growth
No matter your winery’s size or plans for the future, Crafted can help streamline your operations and provide insights to improve your financial standing. Up your winemaking game today with a solution tailored to the wine industry by wine industry experts. Learn more by visiting craftederp.com/winery-edition.
